"I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." ~ C. S. Lewis (Yes, even politics)

In loving memory of Mr. Z

Saturday, November 19, 2011

OWS's rapsheet...and please read the articles below it, too...Tea Parties are being blamed for the White House shooter??!

Our buddy IMPERTINENT just sent me via email this article and it sure fits what I published above..........sad, isn't it.

Marybeth Hicks
Columnist The Washington Times
Oct 20, 2011

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can’t look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, “Who parented these people?”

As a culture columnist, I’ve commented on the social and political ramifications of the “movement” - now known as “OWS” - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: “Everything for everybody”.

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it’s clear there are people with serious designs on “transformational” change in America who are using the protesters like bed springs in a brothel.

Yet it’s not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I’m the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters’ moms clearly have not passed along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters’ mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn’t, so I will:

• Life isn’t fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they’re dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.

• Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don’t operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and “slow paths” to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I’m pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

• Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.

• A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn’t evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

• There are reasons you haven’t found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It’s not them. It’s you.

amen, sista
....and WAIT TILL YOU SEE THIS The Guardian says the White House shooter is to be blamed on the TEA PARTIES!! Are you ready for THAT? That's in spite of the FACT that the San Diego OWS nuts held a MOMENT OF SILENCE in solidarity for him!

Meet Jeffrey Scott.The 32-year-old “Occupy Pensacola” protester was arrested yesterday on felony burglary and larceny charges for allegedly robbing a neighbor’s home of furniture that he used at the protest group’s encampment outside City Hall.Scott was nabbed shortly after victim Ned English called police to report the theft of a couch, a recliner, four wicker chairs, and four couch cushions from his home, according to an Escambia County Sheriff’s Office report.When questioned by a deputy, Scott stated, “Yes, I took the furniture. I was going to give it back, but haven’t had a chance to.” Scott, investigators noted, admitted entering English’s home through a rear window, taking the furniture, and using some of the purloined items “at the Occupy Pensacola Camp located at City Hall.”

I curious where the murders are purported to have occurred. One was claimed in South Carolina but occurred seven miles from the camp and was ruled a homicide. The reporting has been about as accurate as the Obama assassin claim.

The good news in Boston is that a couple of architecture professors from M.I.T. are drawing up a design to winterize the camp.

In New York Mayor Scrooge McDuck has learned the hard way that you have to keep the Imperial Storm Troopers on a short leash.

isn't this nuts?And Obama drew such comparisons....and there are ZERO.Cops in so many towns apparently told the TPers that they left the parks cleaner than they found them.It's a difference in character, in personality. Conservatives with traditional, decent values, don't generally defecate on peoples' front porches or cop cars. They aren't slobs and, well...look at the list; they're not THAT, thank God.And libs salivate for the type of creeps at the OWS spots...where the smell of pot in NYC was making passersby cringe (other than libs, who just breathed deeper, of course....still, as adults :-)

I'm hoping these camps continue because Americans are REALLY getting sick of it. Whatever possible good might have been achieved is sitting second now to the true story of liberals who can't control themselves and react like slime when thrown together for any length of time.

OH, and yes, the Tea Party was demeaned for one or two jerks with inappropriate signs (and who knows if they were truly TP people?)...completely castigated as if those two or three represent the whole movement.But, let people rape and do drugs and defecate and leave public property in bad shape AND (we hear today) harass little children on their way to school with "FOLLOW THAT CHILD", scaring them to death......and we're told those are aberrations and don't represent the movement :-)

So, according to Ducky it's OK to SHIT in the STREET (to hell with decorum, society or hell, public frickin' hygiene and that poor person who has to pick up some derelict's SHIT) when you CHOOSE to be a vagrant?

Good lawrd, the quackster MUST be off his meds again.

No, AOW wasn't in D.C. for two months without access to a toilet because she's not some kind of retro-hippy leftist degenerate.

Did y'all see the article and the links below it....boy, is this world upside down.And the media says nothing!!...just keeps showing pictures of cops beating on some of the protesters as if it's the cops' fault. CNN is hilarious lately, I swear.

Ducky, what did you expect? You hold a city hostage for two months, ruin people's businesses in the city, vandalize, commit arson, rape, theft and murder, and you want the city to supply you anarchists with toilets?

Come on dummy, Acorn has put up money, so why didn't they provide outdoor toilets? Poor little protesters, if they want all the comforts of home, they could've gone home, instead of becoming a destructive mob!!

Besides, they found out that without money, yes, MONEY, you get squat(pun intended)! Ahhh, ain't utopia grand.

How do you get money? You get a job.

"The good news in Boston is that a couple of architecture professors from M.I.T. are drawing up a design to winterize the camp."

Really Ducky? What is that going to take? Construction of some kind? Where, in a city park? The street? Where? You think a city is going to put up with more of this crime and chaos for the winter?

Why should taxpayers foot the bill? It's already cost millions.

There's an old saying that goes like this: "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me"!

Seriously, it's hard to believe, that someone your age has not acquired any wisdom or common sense. You haven't moved an inch past the 1960's.

I've got news for you, you can't go home again, you're long past being there.

Worried about Occupy Wall Street's effect on your bottom line? Why not hire lobbying firm CLGC to conduct "opposition research [and] targeted social media monitoring" to "construct fact-based negative narratives" about the movement? That's right—for only $850,000 you can hire some guys to follow a couple Twitter accounts and write some chain emails!

Here's the leaked memo, obtained by MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes, which outlines a hilariously stupid plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street using "opposition research" (read: searching Facebook for "Occupy Wall Street"), "targeted social media monitoring" (read: searching Facebook for "Occupy Wall Street"), "coalition planning" (read: searching Facebook for "I Hate Occupy Wall Street") and "advertising creative and placement strategies" (read: buying ads for "Occupy Wall Street" Facebook searches). How stupid is this memo? So stupid that not even the American Bankers Association, the target of the pitch, signed on.

And guess who wrote it?

Two of the memo's authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner!!!

Libdude, let's HOPE people with common sense are banding together to shut these people up. They've done NOTHING good for their side or anybody else's have they; in fact, whatever good they'd intended is totally lost in the stench of their disgusting camps and behavior.

I don't do Facebook and couldn't care less what's happening against them; I just hope it happens fast.

OWS is basically like the stuff that goes on all the time in Europe when unions are not happy about layoffs and occupy factories and destroy private property.

The left is destructive. It's not constructive at all.

It's all about seeing companies as the enemy, CEOs as the enemy or anybody that has more than they have as the enemy. And it's all about destroying things to create something new, to have change for the sake of change. It's their raison d'etre.

Ah Imp. Sorry if I came across as "dressing you down". That wasn't my intention. Maybe I'm a little more sensitive because I started out in the business filing checks (and they don't do that now) all the way to directing and Internal Audit Department. Not to sound pompous, but there is little I don't know about the banking business. The banks aren't lending now for the same reason corporations aren't hiring. Until the chaotic government settles down, no business is going to invest in loans or people until they know how it will impact their bottom line.

And while it might bring on more "hating", I worked for seven years in a start-up sub-prime mortgage shop in the finance/IT division. I was there when they funded their first loan to their last one. Yeah, it went belly-up. The owners risked some bigs bucks up front, made some nice cash in the middle and lost their ass in the end.

I can tell you from experience, they were not evil, they got caught up in the environment and it got worse when the market started crashing. At first it makes sense. People who have not been smart, racked up too much credit on high rate credit cards and have equity in their houses could reduce their interest and payments by consolidating into a more reasonable mortgage payment.

The fallacy with that theory is that the majority of those sub-prime borrowers don't learn their lesson. I remember one loan where the refi included NINETY THOUSAND DOLLARS in credit card payoffs. And these credit cards were not due to some health costs, they were due to reckless spending.

The company then sold off the loans to other bigger banks, who were backed by FreddieMac and FannieMae. When the house of cards collapsed because the borrowers (for the most part) continued their reckless spending and didn't pay their mortgage, companies like the one I worked for were some of the first to go under.

There were 30 people employed when I started, grew to just under 1k during the boom and there were two left when I helped them close up shop.

The bullsh-- of fake foreclosures without proper documents was because some mortgage companies just closed up shop without ever forwarding the original documents to the bank that purchased the loan.

Never heard of a foreclosure on a homeowner who was making their payments, even those making them a little late.

I have sympathy for those borrowers who lost their jobs and cannot find another or those who are suddenly faced with an expected health condition and cannot make the payment. But I guarantee you they are not the ones who whine about their houses being "illegally" foreclosed upon.

It's the same scumbags who rack up credit cards before filing bankruptcy that are now complaining about the foreclosures.

That being said, I think I'll volunteer to pay off some idiot's student loan because they think they are entitled to having no debt and shouldn't have to work.

Nevermind, Obama already issued an executive order saying I have to do that anyway.

I remember one loan where the refi included NINETY THOUSAND DOLLARS in credit card payoffs.

Why the hell would your co. give a loan to someone 90k in debt? They knew it was junk when they sold it on the secondary mortgage market. The big banks knew it was junk and bet against their own securities with default swaps.

They all knew they were selling junk but there was profit to be made and screw the counter party holding the bag when it all goes to hell. You and I get to bail them out because they're too big to fail.

Bob, Govt. did not force Rita's co. to make those bad loans. Rita's co. was not subject to CRA.

Fine, the company was "greedy". Blame the mortgage company or the banks. But there was/is plenty of blame to go around.

Did the borrower who racked up 90k in credit card bills, mostly at stores like Macy's, Sears, etc have any culpability in the greed?

So the borrow owned a $400k house with a current $200k mortgage. With the $90k monthly credit card payments, most over 20%, why would it NOT make sense for the borrower to pay off those loans by refinancing their home with a 5% mortgage? Their interest went down and their monthly payments went down substantially.

As I said, the fallacy in the lending in such a situation is that too many of those folks simply went right back out and racked up their credit cards AGAIN. Instead of learning their lesson of overspending and cutting up their cards, they continued being irresponsible.

Of course the sub-prime industry lent to people they should not have, I am not arguing that. But equally responsible were the quasi-governmental agencies incenting companies to do just that. And equally responsible were the borrowers who were irresponsible.

My parents drilled fiscal responsibility into our heads, they never owned a credit card and they bought their one and only brand new car when they were in their 50's and paid for it in cash.

Today, everyone thinks they need to have a new house, new furniture, the latest 3D TV, two brand new cars in the driveway and the latest IPhone and not pay for anything with cash.

Rita, I agree, there is plenty blame to go around. My point is, someone with $90k in credit card debt is a huge risk to a lender. Mortgage originators, like yours, would have never made those kinds of loans if they were assuming the risk. Many mortgage co.s, maybe not yours, were pushing people into sub primes with teaser rates, interest-only, negative amortization, no down, no doc mortgages.

The GSE's, Fannie and Freddie, had underwriting standards for conforming loans that drove lenders to private label securities. Fannie and Freddies market share dropped in the mid aughts. Your video mash up was on hearings about the accounting practices of F & F. Not one word about sub primes. Lot's of talk about capital/asset ratio and manipulating earnings. The result was Franklin Raines and a couple officers paying back $114M in bogus bonus money. Not chump change but not the catalyst of the housing collapse.

Because of dwindling market share, it was pressure from investors, not govt., that pushed F&F into sub primes and Alt-A's. That was well into 2006-07, long after the party started. F&F's hands are dirty but they didn't cause the mess.

Sure, some people are greedy and irresponsible but many more were victims of dishonest predatory lenders. It was the bankers and Wall Street that chopped up the mortgages and sold them over and over when they knew it was junk. It was the rating houses that profited by giving that junk AAA ratings. It was the synthetic derivatives like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. Unregulated, thanks to Phil Gramm and The Commodity Futures Modernization Act. In 2007 the outstanding CDS amount was $62.2 trillion (the GDP of the world), it fell to $26.3 trillion by 2010. $36T in gambling debts, gone. That's why the world was on the brink of financial collapse.

The bankers, knowing they were selling junk, hedged with CDS's and betting the securities would default. That was criminal, a felony. I'm a non partisan critic. Obama, Geitner, Summers, Rubin, they've done nothing. Holder's done nothing. Those crooks belong in jail.

Folks like Bob have bought the propaganda that it was the Community Reinvestment Act and govt. forcing banks to make bad loans. That is demonstrably false. Over half of sub primes originated with mortgage lending co.s, like Rita's, that aren't subject to CRA. Only 6% of sub primes were originated under CRA. They performed equally with all other sub primes, meaning a fraction of those defaulted. So, less than 3%(I'm being generous here) of the bad loans were CRA and that dragged the entire world economy into near collapse? I don't think so.

ah, yes, craig...Rita was in the business for years but you know better :-)

that kind of hubris always cracks me up.

Z, I've actually researched what "people in the business" and people who know the business and have analyzed what the business did. I commented on Rita's claim that her co. gave a mortgage refi to someone with $90k in credit card debt. Good for the borrower, insane for the lender. Unless they can pass the risk off to the next sucker, which is what happened.

Not trying to change the subject but maybe you'll see my point. 97% of published climate scientists, people in the business, agree the earth is warming at an alarming rate (in geologic time), it's 95% certain to be caused by human activity and is likely to cause major disruptions and possibly catastrophic changes. You are sure, without a doubt, that it's a hoax. And you want to tell me about hubris?

Thirty years in banking, seven years at a mortgage company Craig. And it wasn't JUST the CRA that was promoting loans to unworthy borrowers. Mortgage companies were also subject to the HMDA regulations.

All of these supposed worthy regulations were to make sure the uncreditworthy borrowers were not being discriminated against. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac then made it PROFITABLE for the lender to make bad loans.

If you want to find the real problem, look in the portfolios of the Congress critters that were telling the regulators there was nothing wrong when the system was about to buckle.

If you don't believe Franklin Raines was in bed with Maxine Waters and Barney Frank, you're living in fantasy land.

The corruption began in Washington and spread throughout the mortgage industry.

But, hey, let's just hang all the bankers because Waters would rather you be diverted from you realizing that her husband was director of a bank that ended up getting $12MM in TARP money through her influence.

And to be clear, Alt-A loans were not sub-prime. They were a step below prime loans, which meant they were likely decent loans to be made to some borrowers whose credit wasn't pristine. I've not studied the default rates on Alt-A loans, but I would be shocked if they were anywhere near the rates of true sub-prime loans.

Additionally, no-doc loans were not made to sub-prime borrowers. I know because I have a no-doc mortgage on our vacation home. No-docs required pristine credit and FICO scores well into the 700's. No-docs only meant the underwriting did not include verification of income, employment or assets because the credit report and FICO score indicated the borrow paid their bills on time, all the time.

I opted for the no-doc loan because my husband was self-employed at the time and we did not want to hassle with the documentation of having to prove his income by supplying several years of tax returns.

If there were companies that wrote no-doc loans on anything but prime loans, I sure didn't find them.

In every industry you will find those low-lifes who commit fraud and outright embezzlement. I know that too, because most of the years I worked in banks were as a director of internal audit. I caught, reported and prosecuted a half dozen banking criminals. They were the petty criminals and it was never a wide-spread conspiracy.

As for climate change, will people EVER realize that it's less that there ARE climate changes in the world happening most of us disagree with (nice subject change, by the way...you don't really need to illustrate; it's like you're speaking LOUDER to get the dopes to agree with you?)...most of us disagree with WHY there's climate change than IF there are the very obvious climate changes (many of which are repeats of 'changes' within the last 100 years). Seems like every time there's a record climate problem, there's also the info that this happened the last time in 1918. Also, most of those scientists not agreeing with your opinions are pretty darned excellent scientists who add not only their information but how sad and sickened they are by their colleagues who have joined the Al Gore bunch; one being Lord Monckton, who'd worked with him previously.And no, I won't respond to this anymore; my subject is NOT climate change here but I couldn't let you go on and on so assuredly; my GOD, MUST you always be so right in your own mind?

Craig, don't get so angry; it's not good for you, and people don't REALLY have to agree with you to make you valid.

HMDA reporting is to make sure lenders aren't discriminating against qualified borrowers based on race, gender, religion, etc. It doesn't lower standards for lending.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac then made it PROFITABLE for the lender to make bad loans.

They weren't buying bad loans and that is why their market share dropped. It wasn't until the share holders pressured them that they increased their % of subs and Alt-A (yeah, less risky than subs but still non conforming). You said yourself that, "The company then sold off the loans to other bigger banks". They were chopped up by private label mortgage backed securities and F&F bought some. So did hundreds of other institutions around the world.

If you don't believe Franklin Raines was in bed with Maxine Waters and Barney Frank, you're living in fantasy land.

Agreed, along with half of Congress. Both parties. The video you linked to was from hearings on accounting practices. Do you really think the housing collapse was an accounting problem?

But, hey, let's just hang all the bankers

Just the guilty ones. Some serious investigations from Holders' Justice would be a start.

In the height of the housing boom in 2006 and 2007, low-doc loans accounted for roughly 40% of newly issued mortgages in the U.S., according to mortgage-data firm FirstAmerican CoreLogic. University of Chicago assistant professor Amit Seru says that for subprime loans, the portion exceeded 50%.

Psst, I know Monckton isn't a scientist....he couldn't have been one and worked with Gore like he had until he woke up.

And I love discussion, too (it's why I blog), but you have a smarmy attitude, a way of pulling someone in and then insulting which has always sat ill with me in everyone else like that,too. You probably don't even see it. I hope not.

What ignorance. Safe doesn't mean good return...And Craig you missed my point about social security and greed and dishonesty. So re-read my post and answer accurately. That is if you can.

Are there greedy and dishonest people in govt? Absolutely. Is SS greedy and dishonest? Absolutely not.

The premise of your question is screwed up. Calling it a scheme? As in Ponzi scheme? It's not. Maybe you should reread your post. You asked why "the money is not kept safely in a bank? Banks are "safe" to the extent that your deposit is insured by the federal govt. You said nothing about "good return" in your question. SS is not a retirement investment program, it's an insurance program. An enormously successful one. Never missed a payment and is currently $2.5T in the black. The cost to administer is about 1.5%.

Interest rates on a bank money market account is less than 2% apy. Savings account, less than 1% apy. Yield on a 20 year Treasury, 3%. So, you're wrong about that too. The alternative is to risk it on the market and blow 15% on broker fees. Then it ain't insurance anymore.

Definition of the wikipedia: "A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation"

It's exactly what it is. Especially when it's financed through IOUs and when the money we put it goes to the general funds.

A private broker or bank would do that and people would ask for their heads on a stick.

"Freedom is never more than one generation away fromextinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must befought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day wewill spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children whatit was once like in the United States where men werefree." -- Ronald Reagan

remember

Andrew Breitbart...American Hero

Mac 'n GeeeZis my food blog...enjoy! Sorry I haven't added to it in a long while.

President Obama has done such a horrible job with the economy and foreign policy that now Kenyans are accusing him of being born in the United States :-)

important reminders:

We are surrounded by IDIOTS...Mr. Z

“Barack Obama's political genius is his ability to say things that will sound good to people who have not followed the issues in any detail —regardless of how obviously fraudulent what he says may be to those who have. Shameless effrontery can be a huge political asset, especially if uninformed voters outnumber those who are informed.” Thomas Sowell.........AMENTolerance is the last virtue of a dying society. (doesn't matter who wrote it, it's true and it's here)

The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.... Peter Brimelow

The difference between golf and government is that in golf you can't improve your lie. ~George Deukmejian

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